by Sam Lock
‘But to be experiencing it now, that is a different story. It makes me think that I am in some way sick; ill; mentally, I mean; and the writer in me wants to know what illness it is from which I appear to be suffering, and have been suffering for weeks – perhaps for months: maybe for even more; going back for several years to – when?
‘Here, my pencil pauses; hesitates; as if it had touched upon something that it cannot quite bring itself to recognise, and that it would do wrong to force. After all, I know, because I have read of it in books, that there are areas of the mind that need to be left alone; that there are mental swamps, forests, that it is unwise to disturb or to enter; and that it can be dangerous to push into or explore.
‘And yet, I have to do something! The sight of myself in that mirror! The sagging flesh; the unhealthy colour. So horrid! So horrible! The excessive drinking, eating, having made me what? – a monster? Even my landlord, Arnold, is not that. Eccentric though he may be, he is not a monster. I spend so much of my time alone these days; roaming the streets; sometimes, I notice, being glad to be physically close to people in the shops: people I do not know and have not seen before in my life, but the warmth of whose bodies I experience briefly as they pass, or as they brush quickly against me. Usually men, I notice (curious that) as if I am seeking some lost or other part of myself.
‘This is quite new to me. It is true that I have had only a few relationships with women, but nonetheless, my marriage was a successful one; or it was at first, at least; and for quite some time. But then, as the children grew, things began to change and then to go wrong. And I didn’t face it: still haven’t faced it.
‘They – meaning both the children and my wife, Jill, began to – well, how shall I put it? – to offend me. I objected to their – yes, to their very existence; and I began to retreat from them: to withdraw, as I see it now – meaning, as I am writing this – into myself.
‘And the time feels so strange. Nothing seems to be quite real – quite tangible; except, perhaps, for the food that I eat. There is that moment – usually just once a day – when, as I sit down at table (now almost always in a restaurant, and which I am able to afford, thank goodness, due to the money left to me by my grandfather) I get a temporary sense of density, of opacity; of things being solid and concrete. For the rest of the time, I either see through things, almost as if they were transparent, or I find myself looking at the people and places around me as if from some great distance.
‘What disturbs me, and what has been disturbing me this very day – and which does so almost every day – is that I have heard how people who have been ill – who have been extremely ill, that is – and who have been in danger of dying, will often experience this kind of sensation: of being removed from the things around them; as if, some say, they are looking down from a great height; or are peering down some great tunnel towards a glow of light at its end.
‘Not that I have had the latter type of experience. Not for me is there the glow of any kind of promise lying ahead. But this much at least I am able to say; am able to acknowledge about myself; that although only just, I have at least managed to maintain a degree of presence in this world; and that the things I touch, that I fondle, that I occasionally almost kiss, still create a sweet sensation for me, that tells me I am still here: still not quite a monster: still a mortal, earthly being.
But where am I at other times? Where do I go? These are questions that nag away at my mind. And wherever it is or might be, another question I need to ask myself is why do I want to go there? – why do I find myself giving in it would appear so willingly to the peculiar kind of listlessness that leads to such departure?
‘When I was young (must I go back that far?) I recall how, unlike my brother, Jeremy, who, as far as I could gather, and from the little he ever spoke about such matters, was untroubled by his body; and who always felt that he was in control of it; and that he could command it to sleep when sleep was needed; or to be bright and alert when that was what was required, I, by contrast, felt – indeed, knew – that my body had a force in it, a strength, that it was beyond my power to govern. Even when I was tiny – like six or seven, I mean – I felt this sense of being in some way driven by my physique: and that it could compel me into actions for which I could hardly feel responsible.
‘And this is a truth about myself that I have done my best to avoid: have never faced, in fact, until now, this very moment. It is strange how the action of a pen, or of a pencil, can sometimes lead one to confront such a thing; but the truth will out, as they say, and so often as good a means for it happening can be the marking of a sheet of paper, such as the one upon which I am writing now, by an instrument of writing.
‘Did the first scribes, when they set down upon tablets of clay their tales – their stories (their ‘myths’ usually; for more often than not they were tales that had formed over a considerable period of time, and that were known by a large number of people) – experience this sense of a truth coming out: of it being faced – truly faced, that is – now that the time for setting it down had finally come? And has such a time come for me – or for my story, rather? Not the outer one: not the outer story; which is mainly a lie. Not the one of my conformity; of how, lowering my head, as it were, and wanting to do all that was expected of me, I picked my way along on an accepted, collective course; learned, studied, did fairly well at school; was told that I could write (by my mother); believed that I could, and that I had a gift for it; got my work published when I was young (too young); married; had two children; became something (only just something) of a figure in the world of books and of words; developed a readership – a devoted one, it seems – that will always purchase the books that I write; or that will purchase my novels, at least (my one biography, which is of a poet, did very badly, I am afraid); and have attracted quite a few critics as well; who always speak nicely – who speak decently – about my work; who always say that I am a “good” writer, and in the “upper bracket”, as they put it. No, not that story: not the one of the appearance, as I suppose one might call it, but another one, that has to be lived on the inside–lived secretly; lived privately. Is that the one that I now have to face; and have to face by telling it, by setting it down – here, in this new notebook, that I bought just a few days ago; one of a pair: as if I already knew (because one can know such things, I believe) that what they would be used for – indeed, what they are being used for already – would require quite a few pages; more than just one bookful of them? And as if I knew as well that the time had at last come for putting my house – my garden – in order?
‘Well, we shall see. I’ll write it if I can – that other story: that inside one; that alternative one. I’ll examine myself–take a good look at myself; avoid none of the warts, none of the wrinkles. Speak of fears. Speak of desires, perhaps, but not perhaps of hopes. That is a truth that I can declare on this page at once; that hope, for me, is a thing that appears to have gone out of the window, or down the drain, or the plughole, or somewhere like that. Because of what I am – meaning, because of what I have become. Because I have lived so much to suit others and not to suit myself. Because I have done all the right, all the accepted things, that a man is expected to do (including, I might add, fight for my country in the army, which my conscience told me I really ought not to have done), the image I have presented to the world, and that to a certain extent I have accepted and taken on, has been a sham.
‘There! I have said something that I have avoided saying – or thinking even – for years; yet which I now know to be true, and which I have vaguely known must be true as the story of my outer life has developed. And being somewhat tired (I am writing this after having slept badly last night, due to my neighbour having fallen asleep in a chair; and to his having tumbled onto the floor; and to his having left all his lights on, as a result) I think I shall leave things for the moment.
‘The beginning of any piece of writing is bound to be difficult – or it seems to be for me, at least:
the strain of it being the cost on the emotions that it suggests must lie ahead. Or that certainly appears to be the case with this piece of writing. I am already daunted by the idea of it; by the lack of caution with which I have entered into it; by the lack of planning – of preparing; both of which have always acted for me as a kind of protection in the past, and have afforded me the conceit of believing that I was the sole master of my words.
‘Now, it would seem, I have to think differently: think inwardly, shall I say. Even if the end result is a mess – something of a gabble – it won’t matter, perhaps. “Meaning,” said someone (I think this was in a recently published article I read about Jung – Carl Gustav Jung, that is – who now, it would seem, is taking over from Freud, as it were); “Meaning,” he said, “makes a great many things endurable – perhaps everything.” And I have to give my life some meaning, or give it a deeper one than has been given to it so far. Otherwise, I am at the end of the road, it seems to me, when, unable to continue the lie of my past existence, I shall become – what? A nonentity, I suppose. A nobody: a nothing.’
VII
The following morning, and after he had slept particularly well, Jason decided that he must telephone his parents to apologise for his silence; or that he must telephone his mother, rather, since his father rarely spoke to him on the phone. ‘Caught up in a piece of work,’ was the excuse he gave her; to which he then added that he had nonetheless been thinking about them – meaning both his parents – a lot.
His mother expressed some of the concern she had been experiencing, and quickly told him about his brother coming to London that very night, and of how Jeremy had been ringing him in the hope that they might meet the following day.
‘You don’t see each other that often,’ she had said, ‘and I think Jeremy has been concerned about you; as I have been; as, indeed, we all have been. So why don’t you call him, Jason? He’ll be in town for only a few days – staying with friends in Victoria; so not far from you. At the Addisons’, Polly’s godparents. Do you remember them? I’ll give you their number.’
Jason took the number and assured his mother that he would ring her again soon, and before long would come to visit her. Then he determined that he would contact Jeremy later that day at the Addisons’, and would attempt to arrange a meeting. Not that he had any really strong desire to see his brother. Fond of him though he was, they had grown apart in recent years; for although Jeremy had appeared to be sympathetic regarding the break-up of Jason’s marriage, Jason had the impression that both Jeremy and his wife, Helen, had in some way disapproved of what had happened – even though it had been Jill, Jason’s wife, who had gone off to live in Cumbria with her mother, and who had taken the children with her.
However, Jeremy was his brother, and there was a bond between them that had been forged in childhood; and that allowed them to go for months without seeing each other; or without even speaking to each other on the telephone – even once, for almost a year – and yet still know that when they did finally meet or speak, there would be no real awkwardness between them.
Jason next turned his thoughts away from Jeremy and towards his landlord. He had rung Arnold earlier in the day to make sure that he was all right, and had noticed that his speech was a little slurred; and although Arnold had quickly assured him that it was due only to his having drunk too much the previous night, Jason felt that he should now go down and call at his door, rather than just speak to him again on the telephone: telling himself that Arnold was both proud and clever-minded, and that he might have been able to disguise from him on the phone that he was more seriously unwell.
However, whatever the cause of it had been, there was no sign of Arnold’s speech being slurred when Jason called to see him that evening, at about six; and after he had written that first entry in his new notebook. For Arnold was now looking quite sprightly, and insisted upon Jason joining him for a drink. ‘There’s wine,’ he said. ‘Or port, dear, if you would prefer it,’ he had added; knowing that Jason was particular about such things, and that the port he was able to offer was of a less inferior quality.
‘You will stay for a bit – won’t you?’ Arnold had then half pleaded; always being glad of any form of company; and at any time of the day or, indeed, of the night.
‘Here. I’ll move these,’ he said, as he lifted a stack of newspapers out of a chair and placed them upon the floor beside another. ‘It’s a real honour, you know,’ he added teasingly. ‘We don’t get to see you here that often.’
Jason sat, and Arnold went off to fetch the port, leaving Jason relieved to know that nothing appeared to be wrong, and that life could now go on again as a normal. Or not quite as normal, in that the notebooks he had just bought had wrought such a change in his life. For suddenly he had a cause; an interest; and it was an intense one; and one that had already begun to release him from some of the blockages he had been suffering; enabling him to ring his parents, for example, and to be determined to ring his brother later, and perhaps see him the following day. For he could now understand that doing these things would in no way bind him or inhibit him. On the contrary, they would allow him the liberty that he needed in order to write; and to write about himself for once; and to say the things that he now felt sure he needed to say, and that so urgently needed saying.
‘Well,’ said Arnold, as he returned with a bottle of port in one hand and a pair of small, quite delicate wineglasses in the other, ‘this is a treat. Tell me, Jason, how are you? You seem to be less grumpy than you were; than you have been of late. Has something happened?’
Jason smiled, feeling for once some kind of real affection for his landlord; and some admiration for him as well, in that he had so quickly sensed that there had been a change in him, and that he was now feeling different from how he had felt for the past few weeks.
‘Oh, nothing important,’ answered Jason, knowing that Arnold always looked for outer changes, rather than inner ones, and thinking that he had probably already made up his mind that the change he saw in Jason was due to his having had some kind of affair: ‘I’ve been working, Arnold – that’s all; and I am glad of it.’
‘Oh, well, yes – of course you are. You’re an artist, aren’t you? Artists are only happy when they’re at work, poor things. I’ve never been one myself – though I would have liked to have been. I’m not creative in that sense. I never was. But I’ve known artists all my life, you see; mostly in the cinema – and in the theatre too, of course; and I’ve seen how very unstable they can be, and how it is only their work that really steadies them.’
Jason reflected upon this, wondering if it was entirely true; but knowing that it certainly seemed to be true enough about him at that moment. For although he was glad to be able to be polite and civilised with Arnold for a change, and to be able to spend a little time with him, his mind had now become half fixed upon what he had been writing that afternoon; upon that line – that inner narrative – that he had just begun to release; and that was making him think of a passage that he had once read in Proust (and that he must now look up, he kept telling himself, when he went upstairs to his rooms); about an artist not being free, and that what he has to do is to ‘discover’ what he is creating; as if it were pre-existent to him, and as if it might be a law of nature.
‘Well; now that you’ve come down for once, wouldn’t you like to join us for the evening?’ Arnold then asked. ‘I’m having a little party, you see – late. Lottie – you know my friend Lottie, Jason, don’t you? – she’s going to be here; and the boys too, of course – John and Billy. And Sophie as well. Do you know her, Jason? “Miss Nondescript” we call her.’
Jason thanked him but said no, giving as his excuse the fact that his brother was about to arrive in London, and that there was the chance he might be seeing him; even though he was sure they wouldn’t meet until the next day.
‘Oh, your brother – yes. That’s Jeremy, isn’t it? You’ve spoken about him before. In fact, hasn’t he been here once; to
see you at the house? Called here, I mean?’
‘He has,’ answered Jason.
‘Or more than once, I think,’ Arnold added, always wanting to know as much as he could of other people’s affairs.
‘Several times,’ said Jason.
‘Oh – is it?’ said Arnold, lowering his eyes for a moment, then suddenly raising them again. ‘Tell me, dear – is he good-looking?’
Jason laughed. ‘Good-looking? Yes. I suppose he is.’
‘Better than you, Jason, I mean?’ said Arnold with a wry smile.
‘Oh, I’m not good-looking,’ answered Jason, laughing a second time. ‘I wish I was, Arnold.’
‘Well, you’re good-looking enough for me, dear,’ Arnold replied, turning his questioning into a flirt. ‘Really good-looking men are a bore, you know. They only have time for themselves. All the girls know that … Now, Jason, have another glass. Port is good for you.’
This time Jason declined; and after a few more exchanges of chatter, he left; thinking to himself that he would first go out to have a bite to eat, and then speak to his brother on his return – assuming that Jeremy would have arrived at the Addisons’ by then, and wondering whether he would be different; and what exactly they might speak about when they met, other than the usual brotherly talk, and the spread of family gossip that always goes with it.